US draft requests 4,200 Ethiopia troops for Abyei

New York: The United States said on Thursday it submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council that would authorise the deployment of 4,200 Ethiopian troops to Sudan`s disputed Abyei region.

US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice also said that Washington was "gravely concerned about the humanitarian situation in Southern Kordofan”, a northern oil state that borders south Sudan. US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the situation there is dire.

"The United States has just tabled this morning a draft resolution to establish the interim security force for Abyei as requested by the government of Sudan and the government of south Sudan," she told reporters.

She said the draft "calls for the deployment of 4,200 Ethiopian national defence force personnel under the United Nations flag”. The draft also calls for 50 police personnel.

According to the draft text, the Ethiopian force would be called the United Nations Interim Security Force in Abyei (UNISFA) and would be authorised to "ensure security in the Abyei area”.

"We are looking forward to discussions with council members in order to swiftly adopt a resolution ... so that the agreement that the parties have reached, which is obviously urgent and fragile, can be implemented immediately and effectively," Rice said.

The north and south signed a deal on Monday in Addis Ababa to demilitarise Abyei and let Ethiopian troops in.

Rice declined to predict how long it would take to adopt the resolution. She said that it would not happen overnight.

Unresolved conflicts

The draft says that UNISFA will have an initial deployment of six months and a mandate to monitor demilitarisation of Abyei by northern and southern troops, protect civilians and provide security to UN and humanitarian aid workers.

"When necessary and in cooperation with the Abyei Police Service, (UNIFSA will) provide security for oil infrastructure in the Abyei Area," the draft says.

The Ethiopians will be separate from the 10,000-strong UN peacekeeping force in Sudan, known as UNMIS, which Khartoum has said it wants out of the country by July 09, the day south Sudan is set to secede from the north.

There is also a much larger joint UN-African Union force in Sudan`s conflict-torn western Darfur region called UNAMID, which means Sudan could soon have three separate UN peacekeeping missions on its soil. Planning for a UN force for the nascent southern Sudanese is also in the works.

UNMIS has deployed some troops in Abyei, which both the north and south hope to include in their future territories, but UN officials and diplomats say those troops have failed to provide adequate protection to civilians in the region.

As the south`s secession approaches, unresolved conflicts in a number of parts of Sudan, which had a decades-long north-south civil war over religion, ethnicity and natural resources, threaten to mar the process.

Northern and southern Sudan have yet to resolve issues such as how to manage the oil industry and divide debt.

The north poured troops and tanks into Abyei on May 21, sparking a panicked exodus of more than 100,000 people who fled fighting in a region prized for its possible oil reserves.